ever happily after, but jumbled in the middle
by hyacinthian
Summary: The time in between, he realizes things. ToshOwen


A/N: AU, I guess. It's assuming that Owen's Weevil thing saved him from dying, and that Tosh got put in cryostasis. So there's that. Also unbetaed, so blame me for everything.

* * *

She gasps awake with a harsh shudder and the sensation of blood in her throat. Blinking, her blurry vision begins to clear. She can't feel her limbs. Legs. Arms. Anything. She blinks a couple times, tears coming to trickle down her lashes to drip wetly in her ears. She hates the feeling. She sniffles. Jack.

"You're all right," he murmurs, comfortingly. "We just gave you a shot of an anesthetic because the revival process can be...painful. It should wear off."

She tries to nod, but the sensation doesn't register. "Revival?" she echoes. "The last thing I remember..."

Jack cringes. "Let's not talk about that right now."

Her muscles ache and burn once the anesthetic wears off, but Torchwood knows how to take care of its own (when it can). Gwen and Ianto are there, lingering in the corner. She can still hear movement (sense it in her very veins), and then Owen putters into view. Her breath catches in her throat - he was dying (they were dying), and yet they're not dead. "How're you feeling?" Owen asks.

"Pretty good," she replies, easily. "But I'm supposed to be dead." She looks up to meet his gaze and his eyes flash with something unrecognizable.

"No," he says. "You're not." His jaw clenches.

"The reactor."

"Goddamn it, Tosh!" he explodes, banging into a tray of medical tools that clatter loudly and make her wince. "You could've told me you were fucking shot. I was--I was going on like a stupid idiot, and you were dying."

Tears well in her eyes and the memories replay in her head, burned into her mind forever. Dying images and whatnot. "I--It didn't matter."

"The fuck it didn't. You--You lied to me. You let me--you let me think that I was more important than you." Her eyes flick from the floor up to his gaze.

"Aren't you?"

"No," he says, softer. "No." He wanders over to her again, slides a syringe into the IV and injects something. Her eyes widen. She never much enjoyed losing control of any situation, much less being the subject of actions she can't even see. "Don't worry, Tosh. It's just to help you regain movement. You've been in cryostasis for a long time. And then we did surgery before we revived you. You've been--your body's been through a lot."

Tears splash loudly onto her cheeks before she can comprehend it, streaks of tears that burn their way down, that don't stop. Jack lays a hand on her shoulder, but she keeps crying - deep wracking sobs that make her chest feel tight. It's grief, she realizes. The grief and the panic that she never released at the moment of her death. When she finishes, Owen proffers a tissue, asks her to wiggle her fingers. She tries. Slowly, circulation resumes in her body tissue and movement happens, little by little. Owen lays his hand on top of hers. "Thank you," she says, when she takes the tissue and wipes her eyes.

"How do you feel?"

She turns her head from side to side and manages a burst of nervous laughter. "Normal," she says. "Relatively."

"Tosh, I--it's not 2007 anymore. And I've had a lot of time to think." She clears her throat, nods. "I just--I'm sorry. For...how I was."

"It's all right."

He casts his gaze downwards. "It's just--you could've died, Tosh. You were--You were dead. And we didn't even know if we could bring you back. And you never--you never told me." His voice is raw, fragments of emotion caught in the past.

Before she can open her mouth to say anything, to forgive him his trespasses, his mouth is against hers, plying hers open with past apologies and present wishes and future hopes. She responds as best as she can and his fingers twine in her hair and she groans and Jack and the others do their best to clear their throats, shuffle their feet, look away. She brings a hand up to cup his jaw - his hard angles have softened in her absence. When he pulls away, she looses a nervous giggle. "I forgive you," she whispers. "For everything."

"You died," he repeats, even softer. "You died without telling me."

"I didn't want to--" she begins, licking her lips, "I didn't want to be a bother." More nervous laughter bubbles out of her.

"A bother?" he repeats, incredulous. He kisses her again, peppers her lips with kisses and it's all making up for lost time and arrivals at the airport and Hallmark cards and sentimentality that he never used to let himself indulge in. (Gwen smiles.) "You could never--" He says, moving to her cheeks, her neck. "--be a bother." Ianto cracks a joke, and they all laugh (they all knew the punchline) and Owen shuffles off to the corner. Their private moments are their private moments - not creepy little cobwebs that float into the Hub and are seen but ignored.

Her recovery is gradual, but the time goes quickly for her. Owen is much more attentive than in their previous lives (she almost wants to huff out a laugh at the cliche that presents). Her role at Torchwood is very much the same, this time because of her injury. She's relegated to the Hub, to organizing and orchestrating and operating the technical equipment. Around her third week back, Ianto and Gwen stop tiptoeing around her, start treating her like old Tosh.

But old Tosh and new Tosh bleed together; sweetness and technical savvy matched with a less passive demeanor and a new boyfriend (an old boy friend) who laces his fingers through hers when they walk through the Hub. Sometimes, they make out when they think no one's looking. The bitterness hasn't gone completely (the soil doesn't leech everything, but she was never buried), but it's getting better. She's healing and he's healed and they walk around, genuinely happy. It's a nice change.

He takes her on proper dates, out to see ballets and concerts and things he guesses she'll like, after proper dinners at proper restaurants. And when that's not enough, they sit on wet public benches and eat greasy chips and he steals her soda and she steals a chip and they chase each other around the park. They've become that couple - the sickeningly sweet one that people try to avoid. She laughs far too much these days (it's a nice change).

Torchwood still remains the same - brimming with aliens and woe. Jack's still trying to deal with the aftermath of his brother, and Tosh does nothing but check in on him and bring him tea and forgive, forgive, forgive. It's a little discomforting.

But things return to normal. And she and Owen feel...normal. Nothing with aliens that don't age or people who fall in love who lose each other. The first time she and Owen have sex, he cooks her dinner at her flat and lights candles and buys her favorite wine. He takes care to undress her slowly and kiss her in all the right places and whispers things like "you're beautiful" and "i love you." When she kisses his neck and he presses down on her gently on the bed, she thinks he smells nice. He laces his fingers through hers (that's quickly becoming his thing), makes her come. It's been so long since a man's been in her bed, it's a little jarring.

The fact that the candles he lit earlier inadvertently set the curtains on fire is another story. They scramble to get dressed after the fire department announces its arrival. And in the wake of it all, they manage to cobble together a story about aliens with a quick flash of the badge, and the firemen leave with smirks and eye rolls and murmurs of "bloody Torchwood." All in all, it feels pretty normal.

Jack, for the most part, is supportive. Their lives go by pretty normally as time passes in a sometimes linear fashion (the Doctor bleeds through a couple times, always passing through and saying hi, running around like his life depends on it). They mark their calendars with birthdays, deathdays, anniversaries, holidays - for the first time, they understand each other. Really understand each other. She uses the screen cleaner he got her when he wasn't him (they don't like to think about Adam), and he buys her a new bouquet of flowers, and they go around like normal. (Gwen's surprised by how much post-death Tosh differs from pre-death Tosh. In a good way.)

Christmas and they have their first fight. (It was bound to happen - it's Owen, for God's sake, and Tosh has gotten better about being passive-aggressive.) Alien fish are running rampant around Cardiff and he speeds and swerves and she bitches about him under her breath. And at the end of the day, she throws something at him and he punches a wall. They leave separately (she still slipped his present on his desk before he left) and Tosh spends Christmas with a bottle of wine and Love Actually (she doesn't tell him she cries about him; he doesn't deserve it). She calls Gwen the next morning, hungover, but cheerful, and they meet for breakfast and catch up. (She was nicer than Suzie, always had been.)

New Years' and new beginnings and, eleven-thirty and Owen shows up on her door, pissed and dark-eyed and brooding. She lets him in (she always does). They sit in her living room, the television on, flickering images unobtrusively as they sit and look at each other. She clasps her hands together around her knees and he sits on the floor, arms crossed over his chest. Citadels, each of them. "Happy Christmas," he manages. "'Cause I didn't get to say it to you...at the time."

She smiles. "Happy Christmas."

"Thanks for the gift."

She blushes. "Oh, it was nothing." But before she can regain her composure, he's hastily shoved something at her. She picks it up, a small wrapped box. She smiles and unwraps it carefully, delicately. He watches her, fascinated. The tissue paper is pushed aside lightly to reveal a diamond pendant. She gasps. "Owen..."

He mumbles something, takes another swig of whiskey. eleven-forty-five. "You can take it."

"What?"

"You looked like you were going to say you couldn't accept it or something. But you can. It's for you. Happy Christmas." She moves her hair aside and his fingertips skim the skin of her neck as he clasps it around. The gold heart lingers on the hollow of her throat and he suppresses an urge to kiss it. eleven-fifty.

Her cell phone buzzes on the table and she shoots him an apologetic glance before picking it up. Gwen. They rattle through half an awkward conversation before Tosh becomes really comfortable. Gwen must be sharing some hell of an anecdote because Tosh throws her head back and laughs before regaling with an anecdote of her own. Owen feels kind of like he's intruding on her evening, so he glances at the fibers of her carpet, listening to the tick of her clock. eleven-fifty-five.

He takes another swig of whiskey, letting it sit on his tongue a second before swallowing it, thinking about what he's doing and why he's there and all sorts of unanswerable questions that he certainly can't figure out when he's this pissed. eleven-fifty-eight.

His mind is racing, thoughts and memories and people in grade one who wouldn't share their crayons with him, and at around the memory of someone throwing a pie at him, he makes the conscious decision to kiss Tosh. It doesn't make sense and it's such an odd time and she'll probably slap him, but his thought patterns are not exactly clear at the moment. eleven-fifty-nine.

He stands unsteadily and trudges slowly towards her, catching the way that her eyes animate when she's recounting tales. His mind is muddled but she shines and all he can think is want, and when he gets there, he lets instinct take over, placing a hand on the back of her neck and pushing her towards him. She careens forward, her center of gravity askew, but her lips fall on his and he kisses her like his life depends on it. midnight. (Gwen mumbles uncomfortably on the other line and hangs up.)

She drops the phone as their kisses turn more heated, and he apologizes, the stink of whiskey strong on his breath, but she doesn't care as she reaches for his shirt to pull him closer to her. They tumble onto her bed and her new necklace shines in the dark. (cheers erupt from the television, still on. confetti spills onto black asphalt like snow)

She wakes up the next morning to his lips on her bare shoulder. She smiles and turns to face him. "Hungover?"

"Just slightly."

She rolls her eyes, suppresses a chuckle. "Mmhmm." She slinks out of bed, searching for her robe. Owen makes various catcalls behind her - she throws a pillow at his head. He pouts. "I'm going to get you aspirin, you baby." He blows her an air kiss; her laughs trail behind her as she walks toward the kitchen.

Valentine's Day and there is absolutely no work getting done. The Rift hasn't split open or anything, so things are somewhat quiet. Gwen took a personal day to spend time with Rhys and Jack and Ianto are making eyes at each other from separate corners of the room. Owen hovers around her as she tries to do paperwork. Tries being the operative word.

He sits on a nearby chair and drums his fingers on the table. "Let's get married," he says. She blanches.

"What?"

"Oh, come on. Don't you think it'd be--I don't know, fantastic?"

"Owen," she says, face coloring with emotion, "This is still new. You and me. How am I supposed to know if--if this isn't just a game to you?"

"Tosh." She clicks her tongue against her teeth and frustration, grabs her paperwork, and heads to a room, slamming the door behind her. They all pretend not to have heard.

He proposes on their joint deathday, with a real ring, someplace outside the Hub, and she's quiet. She accepts him a few days later (they've been going out for months, but it feels like years).

Their wedding day is hardly uneventful; they manage to chase down aliens with plans of killing all human beings to make room for new condominium development, neutralize the threat, and make it to the church on time (though they're panting and sweaty, so the priest talks slower so they can catch their breath before the vows begin).

In the end, they have a flat in Cardiff and a house in Kent and an adopted daughter and son (turns out cryostasis and nuclear reactors are not particularly aimed at proper biological reproduction) and alternate between Torchwood and normal lives (they can never bring themselves to leave completely, and Jack can never bring himself to tell them to leave).

In the end, their lives aren't normal (can't be if they celebrate their deathday), but their ending is happy.


End file.
